Tower
by gryffinclaw-witch
Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, Ron and Hermione have to comfort each other and find a way to move on. Rated M for lemons! Mature audiences only please.


The empty Gryffindor tower saw a single person in the common when Ron entered. It was early afternoon, only hours after Harry's morning showdown with Voldemort, not yet dinnertime, but Ron was hungry. He didn't even know if supper would be served—he doubted it—but he hadn't eaten in a day. Thinking of it, he realised that he hadn't slept in longer than that.

When Ron saw the top of Hermione's head positioned over the back of the sofa, he reluctantly continued further into the room and took a seat in his favourite armchair. It was silent. The two of them were alone, and the hearth before them was unlit. They were avoiding eye contact and avoiding conversation, the former of which was especially easy to do because, from the angle Ron was at, he could only see Hermione well if he looked over his shoulder at her. He knew, however, that she could definitely see him better from her spot on the sofa; he'd sat where she was sitting many times.

If he had thought Hermione was much less observant than she was, Ron might have doubted that she noticed him come in. He simply couldn't tell whether it was his imagination that made him feel like she was staring at the back of his head now.

Eventually Ron started to overhear something. It was occasional and quiet, and at first he determined that it was the scuffling of feet outside, probably, or maybe a tree's branch brushing against the nearest window. Then it started to sound more like sniffling, and too noticeably for it to be a product of his imagination.

Discreetly, hoping he wouldn't be dismayed, he peeked out of the corner of his eye, only to see Hermione silently weeping on the sofa, to his left and slightly behind him. She wasn't particularly hiding it—she wasn't looking in the other direction, nor did she hide her face, but at the same time she wasn't begging for a response from anyone.

Ron wasn't sure that she had seen him watching her, so he turned away. Personally, he hadn't cried too recently (except for maybe a little while at Malfoy Manor, when he spent a long and agonising time wondering if she was on the verge of being killed by Bellatrix—but it was easy to disguise then, and he would never admit that to Harry or maybe even Hermione herself). But, if he was sitting in Hermione's place right now, and if he was slowly starting to sob, he would want privacy and quiet, at least for some time. And he kept feeling like he was doing the wrong thing, for ignoring her right now. What if she _wasn't_ looking for privacy? For a second he remembered they kissed during the battle: he remembered the way she looked, and felt, and the expression in her gorgeous eyes right before their lips made contact.

He was doing the wrong thing. Definitely. Ron poked his head around the side of the armchair again.

"Hermione?"

The way his voice lingered in his ears felt unbearable. It was too quiet here and now, and the only answer Ron had the great fortune to receive was a shake of Hermione's head as she trembled and wiped her cheekbone.

At that, he moved slowly towards the couch and sat beside her. It felt too awkward to do nothing, so he willed himself to hang an arm over her. He didn't carry the action out as leisurely as he thought it would happen in his head.

Her shoulder, under his palm, was bony. It reminded of the days when he was young, when Bill still lived at the Burrow. Their mother would always obsess that all her children were "too skinny," and specifically, she accused Bill of committing the crime of being thin. She said that whenever Bill lost or gained weight, the first place it would show on his body was around his shoulders. Ron rubbed his hand across Hermione's shoulder and decided that maybe she was like Bill.

She interpreted the gesture as one of comfort, and for some reason it made her cry more. Ron was only baffled for a moment, before he moved to hug her.

"Okay?" he asked with caution, after a couple of minutes of holding Hermione still.

"I'm okay," she said softly.

She stretched her fingers across the bottom of her face, hiding her mouth, like otherwise she was scared it would otherwise reveal all of her secrets.

"You're okay," he whispered, worried that perhaps she had forgotten that today she survived the biggest battle in their people's history.

She trembled against him. "Yeah," she murmured.

In a risk that he was almost too scared to take—before reminding himself that he was a Gryffindor, damn it, who just helped to defeat the worst wizard in the world—Ron took it upon himself to sneak kisses in between words of reassurance. One kiss to her temple, against her hair; one to the corner of her forehead; to her cheeks; and, eventually, he took her hand in his and uncovered her mouth.

Gradually, romantically, they eased into a horizontal position on the sofa. Ron lost his trail of thought for several minutes as they spent the time kissing, exchanging small caresses. Her skin felt so soft beneath his palms, as he traced up her arms and neck before resting a hand on the back of Hermione's head. After another couple of kisses, the snogging session ended, and she placed the side of her face atop Ron's chest, and they relaxed for some minutes.

Ron thought back to when he walked into the common room, tried to recall whether the Fat Lady was in her painting. He, himself, had sought out the room because he was seeking some peace, but he didn't need to speak the password because Hermione had left the portrait open. Ron was uncertain anyway, because earlier he had seen it tattered, its frame split and tilted on the wall of the corridor, and somehow he doubted that the Fat Lady was safe and sound. And, as long as they knew the password, any Gryffindor student or former student could enter the room unannounced, and the Fat Lady—if she was there—had no reason to deny them entry.

All Ron could think was that he really wanted to kiss Hermione again. Besides, the sofa offered little room for them. He was tall enough on his own, but he hadn't truly noticed that Hermione had grown over the last year as well.

"Do—" Ron cleared his throat. He was nervous of Hermione's reaction, and aside from that, he found it unexpectedly difficult to speak while lying down. He tried again: "Do you want to come up to my and Harry's old bedroom?"

She wasn't really crying anymore, but still Ron saw tears on her skin and lining her eyes. And she couldn't talk very well at the moment; she nodded in agreement, and walked hand-in-hand with him. Ron brought her upstairs to the bedroom's location, higher up in the tower.

While she stepped over the stairs one by one, Hermione was feeling fleetingly fearful that, just perhaps, they might transform into a slide, like the girls' dormitory's stairs, but they never did. Maybe it was because Ron was escorting her, or maybe it was because she or he willed the stairs not to do so, or maybe these stairs simply weren't designed with that in mind.

Some steps were broken, and she and Ron crossed them carefully. Ron didn't bother to count the cracks in the walls while they ascended, until he opened the door to the room and found it still less recognisable.

The one or two pillows from each bed were in clumsy positions, some no longer on their respective beds and instead favouring the floor. The canopy-like drapes around Neville's and Harry's beds were shifted and somewhat torn. Almost all of the furniture's wooden components were scathed or chipped, and Ron's bed was the victim of a harsh spell that must have destroyed much of its structure. Several of the bricks between his and Harry's beds were missing, leaving the room open to the air outside, and the recurrent breeze ruffled the drapes and Hermione's hair as she walked past Ron and said, "Nice place you've got."

"Ha," he said with sarcasm, but he was kind of glad, because at least Hermione was no longer too upset to make a joke. It meant she was recovering. But, still . . . it was unsettling to see this room, as such a safe and remote spot out of the entire castle, so dishevelled. For a span of a couple of seconds, Ron felt guilty and like he had neglected it during the fight—then he scolded himself for even so briefly feeling that this bedroom could ever trick him into taking priority over his closest friends and family.

He looked behind him, over at her; she was standing close to Seamus's sleeping area, running a hand several centimetres up and down one of the damaged bedposts.

Ron sat on the end of Dean's bed, which was the least broken of them all, and swallowed and licked his lips. Without realising it, he hunched forward some and leaned his elbows on his thighs, a comfortable pose he often used out of bored habit.

"Is it a lot like the girls' room?" he asked lamely, immediately criticising himself in his mind for using such an uncreative prompt.

"Kind of," Hermione replied absentmindedly. She removed her hold on the bedpost and turned towards Ron, but she was looking beyond him, studying the walls and the furniture. "These tables are different, from what I remember, maybe they're of a newer style. I think the room's mirrored. And, usually kept cleaner."

Her eyes attentively pointed to Ron when his head darted upright and he exclaimed, "This place just experienced probably the worst conditions it's ever seen! Do you think it's normally like this?"

"Well," started Hermione, grinning.

"Quit being cheeky," Ron scoffed at her, the sound of her giggles in the background. He wanted to quip about the girls' dormitory probably not looking so nice either, but that desire to make a wisecrack was overpowered by the fear that maybe saying so would sadden her again.

"I'm sorry," Hermione chuckled as Ron stood once more and moved towards the front of the room to shut the door. The wind coming in had been making it open and close repetitively, which annoyed him very much. He wish he had taken the time in school to learn a spell that would reconstruct this wall, but he didn't, and for what little he knew, one didn't exist. Well, maybe Hermione knew an incantation like that. She was smart.

She _was_ smart. And responsible, and compassionate, and resolute. And she was beautiful. She was so beautiful.

"Hermione," Ron said, his voice was less assertive than he was hoping it would sound. The word came out quietly, and more like "'Mione," but she still noticed and looked up with big eyes, as if she was suddenly scared.

But she couldn't have been startled. Ron's tone was too gentle, and they had been too relaxed right before, and she didn't flinch. Usually, when Hermione was intimidated, she was prone to flinch—like when speaking to that rat Umbridge, or when she and Ron and Harry often were cornered by Draco; the thing that made Hermione better than that was that she never slipped away out of fear during situations like those. She stayed until the end, or at the least, until everyone else was leaving too.

"Yes," she said, and Ron was unable to stop himself from approaching her. She had a gravity that he had yet to figure out how to fight.

After years, he couldn't figure out why it had taken him this long to kiss her, because kissing her felt great and he wished he had known it earlier. It felt great to be this close to her body, and to be able to relax and take their time.

They were standing up in the centre of the room, Ron leaning a little towards Hermione's direction, so she was bent slightly backwards at the waist. Carelessly, he kicked off his dirty trainers and backed up a little, Hermione following him. Then, less carelessly, and barely separating his lips from hers in the process, he assisted Hermione in slipping off her scorched hooded jacket. The drawstrings were partly torn and frayed, and one sleeve was scorched a dark grey.

Ron gently broke the kiss, and she looked at him like she had been hoping he wouldn't do that, that he would never stop kissing her.

"Is this what you want?" he asked her one more time.

She assured him so: "Yes, Ron. But, may I . . . ask you something?"

He was slightly taken aback. "Yeah, sure."

"Just one thing," she clarified uncomfortably.

"Of course."

Hermione asked with hesitance, "Are—forgive me, but are you a virgin?"

Staring at her, and wondering why she could hardly hold eye contact with him, Ron couldn't decide whether he had been anticipating that question from Hermione. He paused in mild surprise before admitting, almost with regret, "Yeah. I am."

Hermione's eyes got just a little bit bigger, enough to make her look equally (if not more so) shocked. "Oh. Sorry, it's just . . . Lavender . . . a while ago . . . I was just wondering, because back then I thought . . ." She trailed off like she decided it wasn't worth it to defend herself.

He interrupted because her voice got tight, like she was close to crying again. "No," he said. "Lavender, she was nice . . . but no."

Hermione might have heard the sorrow in his voice, but she had no chance to ponder it. "Oh," she said again, right before Ron's hands slid from her spine to each of her hips, and he resumed kissing her.

She was shy; Ron knew because, by the time she finally convinced herself to even so much as raise the hem of his shirt, her upper layers were off and the topmost button of her trousers was undone. All that remained of her were a brassiere, some clothing on her bottom half, and such a stunning body to explore.

The idea of sex was unintentional but now probable, and at this point Ron was prepared but somewhat wary; despite the excitement and gratitude he felt to be sharing something that important with Hermione, Ron didn't want to take advantage of it, knowing that she was in distress. He worried that it would make their first time having sex less meaningful, and he didn't want that.

But Hermione was putting forth more effort to make it happen, to promise him that it was her decision as well. She drew away from him for a minute in order to quickly remove her socks (Ron hadn't even noticed what she was wearing on her feet—he supposed that she must have left her trainers in the common room), and in one swift movement she removed the band from her head that had been tying her hair back; and in an amusingly graceful way, her thick locks fell down and forward. Then, in a surge of uncharacteristic boldness, Hermione hooked two fingers in each of the belt loops at the front of Ron's jeans, and pulled him towards her. He almost lost balance, but took the opportunity that was being given to him, and stripped himself of his shirt and of his own socks.

Hermione stopped and looked directly at his torso. She placed both hands flat against Ron's chest, just beneath his pronounced collarbone, and breathed out through her mouth.

"You're a work of art," she informed him, dropping a kiss on the indentation in the middle of his clavicle, and as she gazed upwards again—almost like she couldn't see the height difference between them—Ron smoothly wrapped his wrists around Hermione's midsection and swept her into another kiss.

With a timid kind of ease, Hermione undid the button and zipper on his jeans. Then she inserted her thumbs above the waist-band and inched them down, over his hips, and they fell to the floor. Ron stepped out of them when Hermione grabbed his hand tightly and led him slowly to Dean's bed, since it was the most intact.

It felt odd and, for a very short time, embarrassing for Ron to be before Hermione in only his knickers, but it also felt nice to have gotten out of clothes that were tainted with dirt and blood. He stood by the bed with his back to it, letting Hermione push them over, because being underneath her made it less complicated to slide her trousers down. They paused in their lip-to-lip contact temporarily, so that Ron could shove her clothing to the carpet, where the rest of it was.

When they resumed, Ron started at her throat. Hermione arched her neck and drew aside her hair to give him better access, and he moved his mouth from just behind her ear to the front of her neck. Hermione seemed to like the range; she exhaled in a manner that nearly made it a very, very quiet moan.

All at once Ron's body ached for hers. He spent a minute running his fingers directly over her spine, moving upwards from the small of her back and when he reached her brassiere, he unclipped the back of it. It fell to the sides, and she rolled over slightly to make it easier for him to slide it off.

He thought her breasts were flawless. The way they sloped was something pleasant, but surprising; many times he had looked at her chest when she wasn't looking at him, but he never would have pictured them looking as magnificent as they actually did.

Ron picked her up by the waist and moved them so that he was on top. He hadn't meant to put her down so harshly, and instantly regretted it, but she made no indication of being hurt or resentful, so they disregarded it. While he kissed and stroked her chest, she wriggled lower, until their pelvises were aligned. The contact was blissful.

Not deliberately, Ron began pressing his hardening member against her. While they grinded, Hermione fixed a grip on the rear side of his shoulders, curving her back to make the angle better, and he couldn't believe that his underwear hadn't ripped yet.

Choosing not to take any chances, he discarded of it and continued kissing Hermione's breasts. Delicately, he placed her right nipple in his mouth. The heat of it, paired with the soft touches his focused on her opposite breast, drove her absolutely mad. When his manhood rested against her entrance again, she began writhing.

"Oh," she hummed against Ron's ear. "Let—Let me . . ."

"What?" he said abruptly, ceasing what they were doing, because he immediately was scared that he had hurt her by some manner. He moved to give her more space.

"Let me do away with _these_," she said in one breath, and then shed her pants, exposing her moisture, and Ron was in awe.

At once he repositioned himself so that he was closer to, but not on top of, her region. He found that, if he kept his head in a place that allowed him to kiss her neck and use one arm to play with her breast, the other arm was just long enough to offer her pussy the attention it craved.

In a motion so sudden and intimate that Hermione gasped in delight, Ron inserted a fingertip into her slit. He was getting extremely aroused from the way her eyes wrenched shut as he slipped his finger in and out. Then he felt foolish because his largest fear at the time was not whether or not she was enjoying it, but was whether he would accidentally scratch her using his fingernails.

That didn't matter anyway, because she had to be enjoying it. He added a finger and had to abandon her breast for a while in order to focus more energy on what he was doing. It was hard enough to feed her begs for more speed, more depth.

From that point, it was only upwards. Hermione felt provoked and stimulated in a way that was only escalating. She began to thrash beneath Ron, who purposely stopped right before he should have, and went on kissing her neck and the top of her chest. She wanted him to leave a bruise, and it felt like he would.

She tried to sit up a little, but there was no chance of that happening. Still, she mustered out, simultaneously while rocking into him, "Can I—Please, let me—" and was just flexible enough to bend forward and get a hold of his engorged cock.

"No," he insisted politely, as badly as he knew he wanted to agree. "Today I want to take care of _you_." He used a finger to sweep the hair out of her eyes.

Leave it to Hermione to refuse to listen; all their years at Hogwarts she never dared to break a rule, but today she simply wasn't going to have it. She easily brought him to the edge of the bed and gingerly surrounded his soldier with her mouth. Not long after, she felt his hands in her hair.

She swirled her tongue around the head, all the while expertly and deftly fondling his testicles. He started to writhe, the warmth of the inside of her mouth threatening to ignite a flame within him. She encompassed the majority of him, hitting all of the most sensitive parts, and he came into her.

She smiled. "Still have more in you?"

"Anything for you, 'Mione," he said anxiously, and pulled her by the wrist onto him.

He gripped her luscious bum and used a minute to lick her wetness. He legs involuntarily spread outwards for him, and she was pleading.

"Are you sure?" he asked. The last thing he wanted, as much as they wanted each other right now, was for her to regret him later.

"I'm completely sure," she said impatiently.

From there he firmly brought her under him and penetrated her. When he realised how tight she was, he was more gentle with what ensued, but as they both adjusted he started to pound into her. The rhythm was heavenly while he pumped, she moving along with him, fully appreciating the sensation of his hardness inside of her. The deeper he went, the deeper she wanted him to go.

As he picked up speed, and as his heartbeat accelerated too, he watched her breasts sway back and forth; he couldn't stand it. She tossed her head and smiled to herself, and seeing her hair on the pillow, all spread out behind her, kept him going.

"So close. . . . G-go faster," she demanded of him, and shivered. "Oh! Yes! _Aah!_"

Ron began to groan coarsely with each push into her. Hermione whimpered in longing.

As he found the best parts of her, the walls of her tunnel pulsed uncontrollably against his throbbing dick, and suddenly everything was intolerably responsive to anything. He couldn't prevent himself from thrusting, and he didn't want to. Hermione screamed in nothing less than pure joy, and climaxed shortly after he did.

Hermione's chest raised and lowered rather quickly while they caught their breaths. Ron dragged his fingers through her hair one more time, and kissed her temple. She closed her eyes and felt him slowly relax against her body.

"Are you tired?" Ron asked her.

"I'm okay."

"You're okay?"

"Yeah." Steadily, her breathing reduced and she said, "I love you, Ron."

He raised his head, which led her to make curious eye contact. "I don't know if you've ever told me that," he said, even if it was needless, the way he felt it was.

"Well, now I have," she said. She swallowed the last of her exhaustion, wrapped her hands slightly closer around his upper body, and said, "And I mean it."

The only way he could react was happiness, but Ron didn't know exactly how to show it. He didn't want to smile or anything, because Hermione wasn't. He decided to reciprocate her behaviour. "I love you, too."

Ron woke up later that evening, when the wind had calmed, and the light that spilled into the bedroom from the new window was more golden. His first, most massive worry was that someone had or would soon enter the dormitory, if not this very room, and he couldn't recall from earlier if he or Hermione had sent an _Alohomora_ towards the door. At first Ron tried doing nonverbal magic, because he didn't want to disturb Hermione's rest, but he wasn't skilled enough for it to work. He reached for his wand, usually stowed safely in the pocket of his trousers, only to learn again that he was stark-naked and that his jeans had been helplessly cast onto the floor.

And he couldn't get up; Hermione had fallen asleep on the bed and on his chest. What was further, as he could now fully and unashamedly admit to himself, she was entirely adorable like that.

Without having moved from the bed, Ron bent his head around her to look outside. He estimated that it was either just before or just beyond dinnertime. If it was the latter, Ron was nothing but grateful that nobody had been sent to search and summon the two of them for a meal; although, he was somewhat discouraged that they had missed dinner—it must be closer to a day-and-a-half at this point.

But, after that long time, at least they had gotten a nap. Ron hugged Hermione closer, smiling at the way she looked, and tried to fall back asleep.


End file.
